The General Pinker Principle
"The odds are that we will probably be alright"
Struck by lightning, sounds pretty frightening
But you know the chances are so small
Stuck by a bee sting, nothing but a B-thing
Better chance you're gonna buy it at the mall
But it's a twenty-three-or-four-to-one
That you can fall in love by the end of this song
So get up, get up
Tell the bookie put a bet on "not a damn thing will go wrong"
Steven Pinker talks, in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, about progress. The world has, in the last century, gotten dramatically better. War deaths have declined. Many fewer people are poor. The number of people starving has dropped dramatically—even since as recently as the 90s. And yet despite this, to quote a line that my Mother said in a play when she was a child, “we all agree that everything is terrible and getting worse!” Pinker speculates about why that is, pointing to, for example, the greater media coverage of bad things than good things. Headlines never read, for example, “Everything fine in Brazil—nothing to see here.”
But I think it’s important not to overemphasize the media’s role in this. Because the tendency is much more general: everyone always thinks everything is terrible and getting worse.
I remember in elementary school, everyone always said “oh, well elementary school is easy, but when you get to middle school, everything changes and it becomes difficult.” Then I got to middle school and it wasn’t much harder than elementary school. And people said “middle school is easy—but high school is tough.” Then I got to high school, and it was easier than middle school. And people predicted that college would be more difficult. But college was easier than high school!
Tons of people think we’re all going to die from climate change, despite there being no convincing evidence for that. Others think that we’re all going to die from Biden’s nefarious machinations. Others think that Trump will unravel American Democracy.
Still others think, with above 99% confidence, that AI will kill everyone. Nearly everyone thinks that people are getting poorer than they used to be, even though this is totally false. People predicted the Y2K bug would fry out technology and turn the world into a mad max world.
And these aren’t new! People have been guessing that everything will fall apart soon for centuries. It seems that this negativity bias, this irrational belief that everything is terrible and getting worse is just a basic part of human nature. It’s not caused by anything recent—though recent things like the media may exacerbate it. Particular examples of it—climate alarmism, for example—don’t require any specific explanation. There’s a general explanation—everyone always thinks everything sucks!
Speaking of everything sucking…that was some debate! I don’t think my guy did so well.
The odds are that we will probably be alright
Odds are we gonna be alright, odds are we gonna be alright tonight
The odds are that we will probably be alright
Odds are we gonna be alright, odds are we gonna be alright for another night
I recall seeing an article a year or so ago arguing that the “everything is bad and is getting worse” narrative is a direct effect of our minds holding onto good memories and letting go of bad ones. Unfortunately can’t find it now. But that seems right to me. Also, I can imagine how a bias for “the past was better” might be an evolutionary adaptation in a species that relies on passed-down, poorly understood knowledge. Cf. Joe Henrich’s work.
People's revealed preferences turn out to be quite different. They go through long years of education expecting that there would be gainful employment. They take out mortgages with the expectation that their future earnings will pay it back, and the value of their house will appreciate. They educate their kids, provide them with food and shelter, and love, expecting a better future for them.
We should pay less attention to what they tell pollsters or to Pew Research. A lot more attention to what they actually do and plan for.